By Don Singleton, Daily News, New York
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Dec. 1, 2002 - Liesel Pritzker was born with a silver spoon in her mouth.

Now she claims her family hocked it.

The ultrarich Pritzkers were shocked by the charge, contained in a multibillion-dollar
suit that Pritzker, the 18-year-old actress and Hyatt hotel heiress, filed
in Chicago.

The suit accuses Pritzker's billionaire father, Chicago business executive
Robert Pritzker, 76, and other family members of draining her trust funds
of more than $1 billion.

Liesel Pritzker, known in Hollywood as Liesel Matthews, played Harrison
Ford's daughter in the 1997 hit "Air Force One," and also starred in "The
Little Princess" in 1995.

She claims in the suit that her trust funds' assets were sold by her
father at below-market prices when she was a child, then transferred to
trust funds that benefit other family members.

Since 1994, Liesel Pritzker has "been the victim of an unlawful, secret
and fraudulent scheme to deplete her ownership interests in her family's
holdings," the suit insists.

The suit adds that the way the family handled the trusts was "so heinous,
obnoxious and offensive as to constitute a fraud on the plaintiff."

The action asks a Cook County Circuit Court to force Robert Pritzker
and a dozen other family members to make good on the alleged losses, and
to throw in at least an additional $5 billion in punitive damages.

The family, known for guarding its privacy, issued a brusque statement.

"This is a family matter, and we are not going to comment, other than
to say that it is sad when a daughter, who is a beneficiary of great family
wealth and tremendous advantage, sues her father and other members of the
family," the family said in a statement.

The Pritzkers control a private fortune estimated at more than $15 billion.
Major holdings include the Hyatt Corp., with estimated 2001 revenues of
$2 billion, and the Marmon Group, which holds a number of manufacturing
and financial service companies worth an estimated $7.2 billion.

Liesel Pritzker is one of 12 surviving grandchildren of patriarch Abram
Nicholas Pritzker, a financier and industrialist who died in 1986. He left
"substantially all of the vast holdings" of the family to trust funds,
according to the suit.

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